A cold sky presses at my window,
and the leaves at every edge go brown.
I watch and listen,
though the walls are thick between us now.
The apples on the tree inside the garden
fall, unpicked. I let them fall
as I must fall and you, my father,
too must fall and sooner
than I’m willing yet to grant.
These blunt successions still appall me:
father into son to dying son,
the crude afflictions of a turning world
that still knows nothing and will never
feel a thing itself, this rock
that’s drilled and blasted, cultivated,
left to dry or burn. We soon must learn
its facelessness in sorrow,
learn to touch and turn away,
to settle in the walls of our composure,
and assume a kind of winter knowledge,
wise beyond mere generation
or the ruthless overkill of spring.